Employees in the energy, mining and utilities sectors are some of the unhappiest workers in the world, according to a new study published this week.
TinyPulse, an HR service that attempts to prevent employee burnout, looked at over 500,000 survey responses from over 60,000 employees in 13 different industries worldwide.
According to the results, the top three happiest industries last year were consumer products and services, real estate and technology and software.
Coming in at the bottom were the manufacturing, Government and nonprofit and energy, mining and utilities industries.
The resource sector, in particular, has been severely hit in the last 18 months. As a result of an ongoing rout in commodity prices, companies have cut thousands of jobs, sold uneconomic assets and engage in wide-spread cost-cutting.
Not surprisingly, mining workers attitudes and overall happiness have been affected. But TinyPulse says the depressed environment is not the only factor dragging the moral of this industry workers down.
In determining an industry's overall happiness, the experts looked at answers to questions dealing with management, professional development, career growth, and satisfaction with coworkers.
These three themes stood out:
Culture is key: Happy employees enjoy great teammates and management that practices transparency.
It’s not where they start; it’s where they finish: Not having a path for advancement can stifle employee satisfaction.
Employees want to have a say: Unhappy workers report that their companies don’t take their feedback seriously.
“You’ll be better served by looking at what the top industries do, not what they pay,” they conclude.
